THE SHADOW. JOHN BARRINGTON, whose sombre and exceptional history I am going to tell, suggested, when I first knew him, nothing either sombre or exceptional. He was an undergraduate at Harvard in the earliest eighties, and will be recalled by all his contemporaries there as big Jack Barrington. The mention of this name, so far from suggesting to those who knew him anything tragic, may, if their memories are acute, evoke a vision not only commonplace, but touched with reminiscent humor. For before their mind's eye will rise a youth, tall, florid, and handsome, to be sure, but dressed in the height of the absurd style of those days, - an incredibly shallow derby hat, a cutaway coat of rough material, a high-cut waistcoat of gorgeous colors, with a brilliant watchchain extending from one upper pocket to the other, and patent leather shoes preposterously long and pointed. Still, after all, the clothes- as much extravagant apparel has done before and will do again expressed the joy and glory of youth. He was a Western man, rich, lavish, very popular. His success with the fellows he owed to his smile, and to the democratic, indiscriminate way in which he lavished it. His cordial eye, his regular white teeth, his whole round, freshcolored, good-humored face, made this smile very charming. Health and good humor radiated from him; he seemed to like every one, and certainly every one liked him. I can see him now the centre and the leader of a group of exclusive youths sauntering through the yard, and smiling his irresistible smile upon the unfashionable, the poor, the shy, the "grinds," upon every one whom so magnificent a creature might be expect ed not to want to know, and I fully understand his amazing popularity. A butterfly he doubtless was, but one who did not seem doomed after that one sunshiny hour. There seemed no reason why he should not live through all of a long life in the same care-free, happy way. Some brilliant urban society seemed his natural playground in winter ; Newport or Europe his natural place of recreation in summer. I think that many a poor classmate envied him his roseate future. A man, as I discovered afterwards, of much sensibility, he had the gift of graceful expression whether with tongue with the smile caror pen. This ried him on to the staff of one of the college papers. As I also was chosen an editor, I met him, and underwent the charm of his splendor and affability. For some reason perhaps because all men like a faithful, unquestioning worshiper-he liked me, and I, happy in his friendship, followed him about, as much a slave of his as the bulldog which usually trotted at his heels. I was not ashamed of my subjection: I had much company, and the post was one of honor. When Barrington was graduated, he went to New York and bought a seat in the Stock Exchange. I, on the other hand, became principal of a high school in a small and rather remote village in New Hampshire. As it happened, none of my classmates lived very near me, and all I could learn of my college friends was what I gleaned from the periodic reports of our class secretary. Barrington's accounts of himself were meagre in the extreme in fact, I can remember but one item. Five years after his graduation, he reported his marriage to a girl whose name I recognized as one I often saw in the "society columns" of the New York newspapers. That was quite as it should be, and I smiled at this confirmation of the prevision I had had in More than fifteen years went by before I strayed from my country solitudes; then I went to New York for a brief holiday, and at once sought out Barrington. When I saw him I was shocked. Although but thirty-seven, his hair was not only thin, but quite gray. That he should be stout and florid was perhaps no more than I should have expected, but his flesh and his color suggested drink rather than health, and his face had a strained, nervous look, quite at variance with the air of careless good humor which it had worn in college days. The familiar splendor of garb was there, but it accented, rather than concealed, his misery and ill health. I wondered if he were engaged in any dangerous speculation. appearance, and to ask him what was the trouble. He looked up in unaffected surprise. "What," he said, "is it possible you do not know? In New York I'm a marked man. Every one knows my history. How does it happen that" "But you forget my backwoods existence," I interrupted him. "You are the first of the fellows whom I have seen since we graduated." But Then he told me his history. before I repeat it I want to mention a fact which, as it gradually grew plain to me, increased a thousandfold the pitifulness of his tale. The man actually enjoyed telling the tragedy of his life. I have mentioned his literary gift: he used it to deepen the contrasts, to heighten the effects. I saw that, by a quality in human nature easy enough to understand, he had grown to prize his calamity for His smile, as I marked with much re- the distinction it gave his life. I divined lief when he greeted me, had, at any rate, that it was not only a glory, but that it lost none of its old charm. He explained was also as, for example, in the matter that his wife had gone South for the of his drinking- a never-failing excuse. winter for the benefit of her health, and My classmates, at any rate, will underthat he was leading what, with an ob- stand that, if I make this comment on vious attempt at gayety, he was pleased my friend, it is because he and his wife to call a merry bachelor existence. are dead, and no one remains who might dined at one of his clubs, - he knew, no be pained by it. Were this not so, inman better, how to order a dinner, deed, I should not tell any of his story. went to the theatre, and then wandered "I was only a year or so out of again to the club for a late supper and a college," he began, "when I met Eleachance to talk over old times. As the She was not exactly in my social evening passed I could not help studying set. She was an orphan, alone in New him. On the street, his eyes, traveling York, without friends. She had money, constantly from right to left, studied the plenty of money; but she lived a life We crowds as if there were some one whom he expected, yet dreaded, to meet, and he showed a certain distinct if very slight nervous shrinking as we turned corners or approached his places of habitual resort. I gave up the idea of risky speculation. His worry was of a different kind he acted like a man afraid. As was natural, it was over our late supper that we grew confidential. Seeing that the old intimacy still had its rights, I ventured to speak of his altered nor. which I fancy is not uncommon in New York. There must be many solitary women of means, the last surviving members of good families, who come to the city to escape the dullness of country life. Too proud to make the acquaintances that offer, and unable to know the people whom they would naturally choose to meet, they lead lives of practical solitude. An aunt lived with Eleanor and played respectability. I think that among ordinary people this aunt would have seemed a woman of some force of character, yet Eleanor ruled her absolutely. Eleanor was quiet in manner, but she always had her way. The two women, domiciled in an apartment in a good quarter of the town, found their amusement in the streets and in the shops. They shopped a great deal, they went to concerts and to the theatre, but they had no social life. "A classmate of ours who had known Eleanor in other days wrote and asked me to call upon her. We all get such letters: we call once, we find some provincial and uninteresting little girl, and —well, the most of us never call again. Such a girl I expected to find when I made my first call, and I went without enthusiasm, from a sense of duty. What I found was a girl of twenty, of somewhat shy and sullen manner, to be sure, but surprisingly beautiful, and far from dull. Her manner I put down at once to social inexperience; I found myself pitying her lonely life, and, in short, I fell in love with her. Not tentatively, self-indulgently, as a man often does with lonely and pretty girls who are not quite well, you understand what I mean; but deeply, absorbingly, without reserve. I burned all my bridges; we became engaged. "Then I began to find out what sort of a woman I had promised to marry. You are an old friend; I may tell you things I might not tell to every one. She was jealous and exacting beyond belief. I do not mean that she was jealous of other women only, although her recluse life had made her suspicious of what she called my fashionable women friends, but of anything and everything which kept me away from her, even for a moment. She was jealous of the men I knew, of my clubs, of my business, of my books, of my very thoughts. Whenever I saw her, I was met with questions-questions-questions adroit, persistent, suspicious which searched out everything, which 12 NO. 556. VOL. XCIII. turned my soul inside out for her terrible inspection. To this jealousy I had to sacrifice my friends, women first, then men. My man had to go; she did not trust him. To please her, I destroyed photographs that I cared for, until none but her own was to be found in my rooms. Finally, she made me sell my dog; think of it, my dog! I lavished upon it too much affection. Can you imagine it? —she was jealous, actually jealous of the poor beast. Then my letters, - she read every one of them, and each was the subject of irritating cross-examination. And woe to me if I contradicted myself. She had a memory for what interested her that was like a burr: facts clung to it forever. If what I said to-day varied by a hair's breadth from what I had said a week, or a month, or even a year before, the discrepancy was at once detected, and had to be explained on the spot, minutely, comprehensively explained and justified. "And she had the mania of control. Where she loved, she wished to rule. She insisted upon dictating what I should do, where I should go, what I should eat, what I should wear, what I should spend. The complaint seems petty, but I assure you nothing can be more exasperating, more humiliating, than this tyranny of a loving woman. "Why did I not rebel? Man, this woman had a will like steel, and a pride in ruling that would not be thwarted. You might murder her if you dared; but while she lived, you obeyed. And I have shown you but one side of the shield. She was not merely beautiful, she was fascinating. There are women whom if you have once kissed, you will go through any humiliation, any loss of self-respect, if only you may come to kiss them again. Eleanor was such a woman. Besides, I did rebelin a fashion. Dreading the ordeal through which I always had to pass at the beginning of our interviews, I dared now and then to give myself a holiday. But when I returned to her, I paid heavily for my stolen day of liberty. Never losing control of herself, she drove me to fury by the most humiliating questions, by making me satisfy the most cruelly injurious suspicions. These scenes left me stricken with shame both for myself and for her, left me stripped bare of self-respect. "These are things which a man does not usually tell; but I want you to understand why I left her, jilted her, broke my vows. Flesh and blood could not stand her exactions, and the prospect of a lifetime with her became a thing to drive one insane. There came a time when it seemed to me that if I saw her any more, I should kill her —or myself. Yet, for a time, I continued to endure all her injuries, her cool insults. It seems incredible, and I hardly know how to explain, to find the words. She was proud, imperious, passionate, feline, - all suspicion and jealousy one instant, all caresses and affection the next. She had infinite surprises, she was infinitely interesting. In going to her, I knew only that I should be intensely happy, or intensely miserable, or both. Do you wonder that she owned me morally, physically; that I was her slave, her plaything! Some of the old Italian women must have been like her. "Was she of foreign blood? Not at all! She was a Yankee, the daughter of a man of rare force of character, I believe, whose mills created the prosperous town from which she came. You have read Miss Wilkins's new novel Pembroke, perhaps. It's a horrible story of the force of perverted wills, but it has helped me to understand Eleanor. "But at last I summoned every bit of moral strength I had and broke from her. I cannot make you understand what the struggle cost me, so strong was the desire which now and again came over me to return to my bondage. But I did not go to her. I refused to see her. I refused to answer her let ters, though they revealed to me a depth of passion I had not guessed before. Finally, I refused — partly through fear of the emotion they caused me even to read them. I returned them all — unopened. Then she sent me telegrams. As I could not, of course, guess from whom these might be, I had to open them. They were unbelievable! 66 Finally, they stopped. For a while I breathed more easily. Little by little I gained-so I thought an assured self-control. Only one thing spoiled my pleasure in my recovered freedom, — I knew that she still loved me even more deeply, perhaps, than I had loved her. I knew she never would, never could love again. I knew how much against her were the circumstances of her lonely life. I knew how-without friends, without social distractions she would have every opportunity to brood morbidly over my desertion. I knew how deep and cruel would continue to be her despair, how bitter and fierce would be her resentment of the insult I had given to her pride. I knew-and the burden was heavythat I had ruined a life. "Well, the weeks went by: these painful impressions lost something of their sharpness. I began again the interrupted round of my usual social routine. Calls, dinners, dances, the play, and the opera became again a part of my life. I thought only occasionally of the desolate woman going about her apartments, too proud, as I imagined, to seek the one source of possible sympathy, old aunt. One night I had been with a theatre party to the play. It was a winter evening, bitterly cold, with a wind that cut like a knife. When we left the theatre we were all talking and laughing, and I had stepped forward to help one of the women a pretty girl, radiant at the moment with pleasure - - the into one of the waiting carriages, when a familiar perfume made another woman rush back into my memory, and filled me with the most disturbing, the most poignant emotion. I turned instinctively. Dressed in black, thin, pale, her resolutely compressed lips blue with cold, her eyelids with their dark lashes cast down, there at my elbow stood Eleanor. She did not look at me, she did not speak, she did not move. She simply stood there in the cutting wind, a living reproach. And there she remained until all of us had entered the carriages and been driven away. My wonder as to what accident brought her there at that hour, and in that garb, did not prevent the spectacle of her desolate and pathetic figure from striking deep home to my conscience. It made me realize the depth of her misery, and for that misery I, and I alone, was responsible. Only by recalling with all possible vividness the somewhat blunted memory of her jealous exactions could I keep myself from going to her at once. For that evening all power even to appear cheerful went from me. "More surprises followed. The next evening when I went to the club for dinner, she stood on the curbstone, in the same black gown, with the same pallor, the same controlled quiet, the same downcast eyes. Oppressed by the thoughts and emotions which these unexpected meetings evoked, I went that night again to the theatre, on the chance of finding there some slight self-forgetfulness. She stood by the door as I passed in, she was standing on the curb when I came out. The next morning when I went down town to my office, she was there, a black, accusing figure against one of the white pillars that upheld the portico of the great building. And so it was for a week, a month. Everywhere I went, there she was patiently waiting on the sidewalk near where I must pass, -in rain, in shine, in cold, in snow, always in black, always silent and motionless, like a statue with downcast eyes. I soon saw that these meetings were not accidental: they were planned. I thought I divined. I had left her no way to win back her happiness except by this dumb, pathetic appeal." Barrington paused and wet his dry lips from the glass of whiskey and water which stood by his hand on the table. He had been drinking steadily all the evening, but the liquor seemed to have no other effect than to flush his cheeks, and to brighten the lustre of his restless, fear-struck eyes. "You can imagine," he continued, "how this would affect a man. Her appearance so moved me, so filled me with pity, that all I recalled was the charm, the affection of her good moments. And bear in mind her beauty, her seductiveness, her strong will, which I felt upon me even through her always downcast lids. It was like magnetism. Remember, I had been under her powerful spell for months, and to the last degree of possible humiliation. Remember that I had the habit of yielding to her. Habit, desire, pity, remorse for the wrong I had done her were the powerful enemies I had to fight. For a time, wherever I saw her, my face turned white, my knees were like broken reeds; I seemed to suffocate; I had an almost irresistible impulse to surrender. Then came a period when I was visited with an even more overwhelming emotion. It took the form of a strange anger and terror, a mastering desire to escape or to resist! Is it strange that in those few moments when I saw the situation sanely, how utterly impossible it was that I should ever return to her, I was afraid of her, doubly afraid of myself? |